


The Soldier's Winter

by Waffilicious



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen, Implied/Referenced Torture, Violent Thoughts, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-23
Updated: 2016-01-23
Packaged: 2018-05-15 15:24:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5790655
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Waffilicious/pseuds/Waffilicious
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky contemplates how the war has changed him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Soldier's Winter

“Hey Buck.”

Bucky looks up from cleaning his rifle. Steve’s looking at him from across the campfire, the other Howlies all in various states of repose. Dugan’s got watch. All the others are cleaning weapons, writing letters, or whatever. Steve was looking over a map, but it looks like he’s gotten bored of it.

“Yeah, Cap?” He’s always torn between calling him by his rank and calling him by his name. He’s Steve, always has been, always will be, but they’re at war, and Bucky’s Sarge just as much as Steve is Cap now. There’s got to be at least a show of formality even if the bite isn’t there.

“Whatcha gonna do when the war’s over?”

Steve’s grinning at him. It’s a game they play, when it gets quiet, when there’s nothing else to talk about. They ask each other what they’re going to do when they get their discharge, and they come up with the most outlandish things they can think of. It had started off innocently enough, but Bucky had tired quick of talking about the gals they’re going to marry or the jobs they’re going to have and started talking about how he was going to join the circus as the lead clown. Or travel the entire country on a bicycle covered in ribbons. Or tap dance down Route 66. Or open a restaurant and serve nothing but war rations and see how the civilians liked it. His facetiousness had caught on quickly, and now when they talked about the end of the war, no one talked about it seriously.

What they didn’t realize was that Bucky had stopped taking it seriously because he didn’t believe in the end of the war anymore. And here, staring at Steve, his hands frozen on his gun, Bucky can’t bring himself to joke about it either. They’re going to be fighting forever, he thinks. His life is blood and death and violence. He can barely remember a time when it wasn’t. It seems like a dream now, something that’s half-real at best.

Three days ago they’d taken a Hydra base and he’d killed twenty people from his sniper perch. Only about half of them were necessary targets. The rest had been because he was bored.

The week before he’d shot a man in the kneecap and then cut his fingernails off to get information out of him. He’d gotten it. He probably hadn’t needed to be as thorough in torturing him as he was, but Bucky had had some aggression to get out.

Thing was, he’d had aggression to get out since Steve pulled him out of Zola’s lab. There’s a slow, constantly burning anger at Hydra and Schmidt and Zola inside of him, and Bucky is honestly terrified of what he does to feed it. He’s also terrified of what will happen to it if the war does end. Which it won’t. But if it does, what happens to all that anger? It’s what’s driving him now. The fury and Steve. They’re what he gets up for in the morning.

He’s been quiet too long, staring at Steve with a stupid wide-eyed look like the man’s grown an extra head in order to look over that map better. Steve’s looking worried.

“You okay, Buck?”

Fuck, and now everyone’s turning their heads to look at him, even if the glances are only cursory. Bucky clenches his jaw a moment and then smiles brightly, a killer’s smile, the only smile he knows anymore.

“Fine, Cap. Just thinkin’ ‘bout all the monkeys I’m gonna catch and train to perform Shakespeare at Carnegie Hall, that’s all.”

The Howlies laugh and go back to their tasks, but Steve’s still got his brow furrowed, searching Bucky’s face like he knows Bucky’s lying through his teeth. Which he is, every word. But he holds Steve’s stare, silently daring him to call him out on it here, in front of everyone.

Steve doesn’t, of course, wouldn’t do that to him, but Bucky knows he’s going to try to pull him aside later to discuss it. In the meantime Gabe Jones starts teasing Morita about the letter he got from his sweetheart back home and everything goes back to normal.

Bucky turns his attention back to his gun and tries to ignore the itch in the back of his skull that wishes it wasn’t so quiet, that something would happen, that they’d get jumped by Hydra goons so he could kill something. The quiet’s nice for a day or two, but he starts getting antsy before too long. He can’t enjoy quiet anymore. He’s not fit for civilian life. He’s got blood so far beneath his fingernails that there’s no hope he’ll ever be clean of it. It’s soaked in his skin. He’s just about bathed in it, like that Countess Bathory who wanted to stay young forever, except it’s done the opposite for him. He’s bathed in the blood of his enemies and it’s aged him a thousand years in the space of a handful. He’s seen the dirty underside of the world and dug his home in it, a creature of the dark just like the skittering bugs and vermin you find underneath rocks. Except they don’t war like humans do.

It’s cold. It’s hell and it’s cold, and people joke about things never happening when they say “when hell freezes over,” but what they don’t know is that hell is already frozen. There’s no fire, just dampness and clamminess and darkness and never being warm and dry again.

Bucky finishes with his rifle and moves on to his knives, from one instrument of destruction to another, and he sharpens them to a fine edge and makes sure they gleam. He’s fairly certain he’ll never be clean again, but his weapons sure as hell will be.

Steve’s still staring at him. Bucky looks up again to meet his gaze, and they stare each other down while the rest of the Howlies talk and tease around them, like they’re the only two people on the planet. It’d be goddamn romantic if Bucky wasn’t covered in mud and blood and cleaning and sharpening his knives. Steve, though. Steve’s perfect, obviously. He never could be anything else.

Okay no, he’s not perfect, and Bucky knows it. He’s just as dirty and bloodstained as the rest of them, but it still seems to roll right off of him, like it doesn’t sink in and stain. Like water and oil.

Or maybe Bucky’s just sunk that much lower, so that Steve still looks like he’s that much closer to the sun.

That’s probably it. God knows Bucky loves Steve more than life, but nobody’s that perfect. Bucky’s just so deep in the pit that when he looks up he’s blinded by sunlight, and Steve, up at the top and looking down at him, gets caught in the glow.

Bucky laughs to himself and shakes his head. His thoughts are getting ridiculous. Steve’s brow furrows further, if that’s even possible, and Bucky wonders if he’s trying to figure out a way to convince him to take leave or something. For his health. Like leave wouldn’t be worse for his health than war is. The war’s awful, sure. But being free of it, that’s what would really kill him.

Steve’s over there worrying about him and Bucky’s tempted to just stand up and walk over there and smack him across the face and put on his best drill sergeant voice and tell him to stop it and concentrate on the mission. He wonders if Steve would even feel it. Bucky thinks about doing it just to see, and to feel the crack of skin against skin on his own hand. Would it feel good? Would he want to do it again? Would he regret it?

He should probably stop thinking about this kind of thing. It’s the war, probably. It’s turned him into this. Whatever this is. A monster. He can’t live without the war because the war turned him into this and it feeds him and fuels him, and without it he’d just be an empty carcass stinking in the sun, the nice old ladies and gentle civilians having picked him clean with their peace and mediocrity.

He and Steve are still staring at each other. It’s probably getting weird. So Bucky sheaths his knives and stands up and walks over to Steve, puts a hand on his shoulder and smiles at him like nothing’s wrong. Like all’s right in the world.

“I’m fine, Stevie. You keep your head in that tactical plan. I’m gonna get some shut-eye.”

He saunters into his tent and sprawls on his cot and stares up at the canvas and wishes he could find it in him pray, so he could ask God to make him human again.


End file.
